|
The shells were
coming at regular intervals now; the Benedict could hear them
rumbling in the distance. It was a common dance: when they got
too close he'd move to the next place and wait the fight out for
a night or two, then move on again. He had it down pretty well
by now and had no trouble sleeping at night. After enduring a
tent-winter in the wastes he had learned to sleep hard.
He
glanced from time to time to the smoke stained window and saw
the red fire rising and falling with each blast, glowing on the
horizon. Rockets carved their parallel tracks across the black
sky like claw marks. There was a subtle rhythm in the
background, short bursts of machine gun fire, a sound so faint
and distant it was not unlike the ticking of a wristwatch. There
had been a time when that was more than just background noise,
when those sounds were much louder and threatening, when he
could actually see children with the faces of adults--black with
hatred, their small bodies pressed against the hard sand of the
barricades. Many of his friends were still out there, braving
the elements and chasing shadows, holding together in pursuit of
a weightless dream. He saw them from time to time, saw the
desperate persistence in their weary eyes, and in time it was
difficult to distinguish them from those that they had come to
vanquish. There were those like the Benedict who had stopped
fighting, men on both sides, men who realized that their enemies
were not so different from themselves. They hid away watching
the war go on, waiting for it all to end. But it kept on going,
a tattered land reduced to a mess of broken homes and barbed
wire. Sighing, the Benedict took another sip of his drink. It
tasted vaguely of cleaning fluid, but he learned to tolerate it,
as he did many things.
The DMZ was better than most of
the bars he'd been to. Knifings were rare, and, as far as anyone
could recall, there had only been one shooting since the place
got started. It actually felt safe here. The patrons at the bar
might have been shooting at each other on the outside, but
inside the war stopped. All differences were lifted; they were
all just tired soldiers looking for a stiff drink and a soft
bed, though many here settled for camel piss and covered
ground.
The bartender, a lieutenant from the incursion
years, ran the place. He poured drinks and settled arguments
when the need arose; he even spoke the language for his
patrons--benefit. The Benedict watched as one of them, a
withered man in his late sixties, argued with the lieutenant
over his tab. It was difficult to see the man's face through the
thick haze of smoke, which was all part of the solid anonymity
of the place. The man's speech was a raspy Pashtun: quick, rough
and rapid. It was obvious that the lieutenant, knowing only the
war pidgin, had trouble keeping up. After a several minutes of
fruitless conversation, the lieutenant grew impatient and
ordered him out, telling him not to return. Resignedly, the man
rose from his chair, supporting his fragile weight with an aged
Kalashnikov rifle. His skin was cracked and brown, like tree
bark. His eyes were a dark and sleepless red. And his hands, his
hands had been in the dirt so long it was hard to tell where the
earth ended and the skin began. It was as though he would fall
apart at any moment--but there was a strange resilience in the
man; he moved forward, stumbling all the while, as though to
mock the duress that afflicted him. The old fighters were the
most dangerous, the Benedict's commanding officer once said.
They've seen more combat than you''ll ever even taste, and
they've survived it all. As he watched the pathetic figure
shuffling out the door, he wondered if survival had anything to
do with it.
He emptied his glass and called the
bar-lieutenant for another. The lieutenant poured, filling it to
the brim as he always did. The Benedict thanked him with a
silent nod, and lifted the shot glass to his mouth. He watched
as the mortars flared against the falling snow through the
window, lighting them up with such brilliance that they seemed
like sparks in the night. The sparks flashed and danced, faded
and settled, coating the rotten riven ground with a calm
evenness. But when the light from the mortars had faded, and all
was black and dark, one could see in the faint grey outlines the
rubble which the explosions had created, which was all but lost
in the moment of the flash. Fire fell from the sky and died
away, and only the ashes remained to prove its existence.
This
fire, this white brilliance, came down with such a force that it
swirled and burned through the air--it shook the ground, shook
the walls, and the window which he had looked out from shattered
in an instant. The Benedict fell to the ground, covering his
head with his hands, his rifle held tightly under his shoulder.
The lights flickered twice, then went out. All was dark except
the flashes in the distance lighting up the room at faint
intervals. Everyone waited covered and silent for a good long
while. They waited until they knew that no more would come.
Whatever hit them must have been a mistake, a shell that
outstripped its target. No one was casting fire here tonight, at
least not deliberately. Cautiously, the patrons stood, and
things returned to a semblance of order, which was all they ever
really managed. The lieutenant struck a match and tilted back
the shield of an old kerosene lantern, the wick caught fire, and
soon the bar was filled with a faint and fluttering light.
The
lieutenant poured another drink, and the Benedict thanked him,
downing it in one gulp, trying to steady his shaking hands. A
heavy silence hung in the smoky air, so oppressive it was hard
to think. He reached into his pocket and pulled out an old
quarter-dollar, practically worthless now, and worked the sides
with his fingers. He regarded the tail half, a picture of the
Statue of Liberty superimposed over an outline of New York
State. "Gateway to Freedom" it said. He half smiled at
the irony.
A zdrasty mercenary, beard heavy with frost,
clad almost completely in Soviet issue armaments, walked with
weighted steps into the room, the hard freezing wind whistling
behind him. He had a great white star sown on his jacket which
meant he was under the employ of the Reveres. The zdrasty held a
Russian AK-47 tightly in his arms--a model almost eighty years
old, and still the most reliable weapon around. His was a large
and intimidating figure, one who in centuries past would have
been at his regiment's vanguard, mounted on a great black horse
with his saber raised high, trumpets blaring and drums beating
as he stormed forth, slicing heads with frightening Cossack
precision. As he moved the room moved with him. He walked up to
the bar and sat next to the Benedict. The Benedict felt he
should move for lack of air, but he didn't want to insult the
zdrasty by hinting that he was unwelcome.
The
bar-lieutenant nodded. "Salaam Alaikum."
The
zdrasty coughed, then responded. "Alaikum Salaam." His
speech bore a heavy Russian accent.
The zdrasty raised
one finger and then made a "V" sign. The
bar-lieutenant nodded and poured him a shot of vodka or what
passed for it anyway.
The door burst open again, and in
came a small group of Reveres and a French Legionnaire, the
white star betraying his allegiance to the Second Revolution.
The legionnaire led the group, for it was plain that he knew the
area well, and probably spoke the language. The Frenchman walked
up to the bar and sat with his companions.
The bar
lieutenant nodded. "Salaam."
The legionnaire
responded in turn, then ordered drinks for his crew.
After
doling out the drinks, the bartender asked, "Comment ça
va?" Which was rough French meaning something like, "How
is it out there?" Or at least the Benedict thought that's
what it meant.
The Frenchman responded: "Pravda?
Ah, It's trés mafi zis soir."
Now the
Benedict didn't know much of the language, but he did pick up on
the "mafi." It was an Arabic word meaning "bad,
bad devil bad." It was used so much around here that one
didn't have to speak the language to know what it meant. He
wasn't surprised it was mafi out there. It was mafi every
night.
The Americans, at least the Reveres of them, were
an arrogant lot, and those who kept the legionnaire company were
no exception. They were loud and boisterous, and cared little
for the respite that others sought at the DMZ. They drank, they
whored, and they basically pissed the hell out of anyone who
wasn't a Revere. The Benedict felt uncomfortable in their
presence, knowing that he was once among their company, and had
taken part in all the silly games that so annoyed him now. He
thought of the sheer audacity it was to declare his former
brothers a group of insolent fools. How could he, when he had
fought for their cause, prove himself superior? All those
moments in the past, fighting and crusading. How could he just
turn around and declare to all before him that that was wrong?
And yet he did, he preached against what he now thought was
injustice, affirming each time to himself that he was in the
right. The Benedict sighed as one of the Reveres, already loaded
with cheap alcohol, took a seat next to him. He tried to get up
to avoid him but the Revere wouldn't have it.
"Hey,
where're you going huh? I want to have some little words with
you."
"I'm sorry but I really must go."
And again the Benedict stood to leave.
"S-sit down."
The Revere barked.
The Benedict grimaced, but sat down
nonetheless.
"Whas yer name soldier?"
They
always called him soldier. He hated that.
"Ben, my
name's Ben."
"And yer rank?"
"I
don't have a rank anymore."
"You fuckin'
bent-dicks are all alike. 'Don't fuckin' have a rank no more.'
Have you ever thought where you came from? Don't your duty mean
nothing to you?"
"I was a private in the
marines." The Benedict responded to make him shut
up.
"What regiment?"
"What the hell
does it matter? It's all bullshit now anyway."
"What
the fuck do you mean 'bullshit'? You're still an American you
know, and you gotta a duty to fight for your country."
"What
country are you talking about? Hell, the flag don't even fly any
more over there. My country doesn't exist. It's dead." His
words seemed forced, it was as though he was still trying to
convince himself that this was true.
The bar-lieutenant,
noticing trouble, went over to the two Americans and rested his
hands on the table. "I don't want no trouble around here.
Either tone it down or leave."
They both nodded.
Satisfied, the bar-lieutenant tended his other customers.
The
Revere was the first to speak, "But don't you see, our
country will exist again--here. We shall clear the land of these
fanatics and set up a government just and true. We will be a
beacon of light, a city on a hill."
The Benedict
smiled; he heard those exact words before--cheap spin, straight
out of the horse's mouth. "And when do you think you'll
succeed huh? When the stars and stripes are flying over Kabul?
How long must it take for you idiots to realize who the true
fanatics are? Why is it that you jar-heads always think that you
need to fight to get what you want?"
"But we
gotta fight, if we don't these towel-heads are gonna take over
everything." The Revere was reaching now, the Benedict
could tell.
"Are you really that dense? How are
these people going to take over everything when they barely have
enough to keep them alive each day."
"But those
are the ones we're gonna save, when we become alive again we
will help them."
Become alive again, the
revolution's term for victory.
"Mafi," the
Benedict swore under his breath.
"It'll happen..."
said the Revere, his voice drifting off into uncomfortable
silence.
It'll happen, sure, and they wouldn't stop at
anything to make it happen. But it wouldn't matter; they failed
to realize that in this war for freedom they had ruined the
spoils, and all that was left was a barren and broken land--one
that breeds barren and broken people.
In the silence, in
the suffocating dark, he saw the fire and the blood, thousands
of faces nameless and dead haunting his thoughts. It was the
numbness that surprised him, the cold indifference that he had
managed to cultivate--nothing fazed him, and he walked through
the mess of bodies without a halting step. He remained a soldier
for some time after the Dissolution, and carried out several
missions as a White Star. It was his last mission that took the
numbness out of him, a sharp pain of conscience plaguing him
with every step thereafter. It wasn't long before he knew he had
to stop. He had no choice but to become a Benedict, a
traitor.
They were marching through the frozen Khyber
Pass on the old border, chasing some rumor of a stronghold that
made its home there after the Northern Alliance fell. He
remembered it vividly: the harsh winds blew the fresh fallen
snow down from the cliff-side, making it look as though the
entire ground moved beneath them. They wore old army surplus
boots which were a couple marches away from falling apart and
secured their footing by aid of a frayed hemp rope. The weather,
though brutal even for the Himalayas, was the perfect cover for
an ambush--for both parties. Oftentimes in weather such as this
enemies would stumble into each other, and just started shooting
in every direction. There is no distinction between enemy and
friend when one can't see.
It was seldom that the armies
went this far north, but without any centralized command the
independent regiments grew bolder, vying to amass honors under
their banner. Theirs was the Blackhawks, an outfit consisting
mostly of marines, and it wasn't long before villagers fled in
terror under sight of their flag: that black bird of prey
bearing its claws to the earth, with blood red background all
around it. It was not that the Blackhawks were barbarians, the
ruling region parties just made them out to be that way. They
spread rumors of the hawks raping and killing the village women,
and torturing the men. The hawks did no such thing--though
that's not to say that other more unruly indeps didn't. The
great fall-apart of central command did much to ruin the army's
credibility, as many of the officers found themselves free to do
what they wished without visible consequence. In the incursion
years, if you identified yourself as an American, the villagers
would welcome you with open arms and tears--for many of them
knew nothing of the conflicts, and the only Americans they knew
were those who spent their time doling out foreign aid. Now, if
you even looked like a White Star, they would run and hide, or
fight and die.
It was a war he thought they could win.
And as he marched in the blinding cold of Old Border Pass, he
felt as though he was doing something good. He fought this war
for all that died back home, for the dispossessed Benedicts
wandering the streets of Kabul, for those poor Nangarhar
villagers that showered him with loving praise when he and his
regiment entered town. He fought this war for America, the old
one, and the new.
It was a long march, but the sacrifice
was worth it--he had so much to fight for. It was nightfall when
they reached the enemy encampment. The place was barricaded with
a three foot wall of unmortared stone, a group of defenders
prone behind it dealing out machine gun fire at sporadic
intervals. The Blackhawks easily dispatched them, and charged
through the wall, firing at any dark figure that crossed their
path. They did not stop until the snow had settled and all was
silent.
The Benedict remembered waking up in the morning
to survey the extent of their victory. It was a tradition among
the Blackhawks to bury those they killed with their heads
pointing west towards Mecca. It was a simple attempt to appease
the natives. But when they cleared away the snow to find their
bodies, they found no fanatics, no terrorists. All they found
were the bodies of hunger-stricken villagers. In that moment the
hawks became the barbarians the region leaders had them out to
be.
He had remembered feeling sick with revulsion, not at
sight of the frozen blood or the blank blue faces, but at the
fact that he had made this a reality. Walking over to an inert
lump near the barricades, he slowly cleared away the snow and
found the face of a 40-year-old man, cracked and scarred from
age and battle. He cleared away the rest of the snow and found
those tiny calloused hands, that small and helpless body. This
was no man, but a child, the sight of blood and death robbing
what innocence he might have had. The war had done to this
child, what forty years of peace would do to anyone else. He
lifted the small corpse out of the ground and removed the string
of bullets that wound around his shoulder like a sash. Next to
him was a Kalashnikov rifle as tall as he was.
He would
never forget that child's face. The mangled hair, the stubby
nose, every crease and shade was as vivid in his mind as the
sight of it. It was strange, he thought, how he could remember
that nameless child, when it was difficult to even envision the
faces of his own brothers now dead. Ever since that time he
could only think of the horror he beheld each day, and feel that
sickness of conscience awakened from a long slumber, a sickness
he replaced with that of drink.
Another shell hit nearby,
breaking the windows and shaking the ground, a great white flash
of light brightening the sky; like lightning, only longer. A
White Star barged into the room and yelled out that the attacks
were being focused on this area. Everyone scrambled drunkenly
out, rifles in hand, everyone except the Benedict. The
bar-lieutenant yelled at him, asking him what the hell was the
matter but the Benedict did not hear him, and soon he was all
alone sipping his drink by shellfire.
He
thought of the futility of it. The Benedicts thought that they
could wait out the war... until what? Someone won? It was like
that gunfight in the blizzard--you can't tell your enemies from
your friends. He thought of all this time he spent drinking and
hoping, avoiding the war, avoiding the truth. What was it for?
He knew in his heart there would be no peace, no way to relieve
this ache of conscience that had pained him. But as the shells
crashed around him, reducing all to smoke and ash he finally
realized there was a way. He smiled and poured himself another
drink, thinking of all the pleasant things he remembered of his
old dead home, and comforting himself with the thought that he
would never have to spend another night lost.
|
